Kyle Devitte: Examining the Major League Lacrosse Expansion Teams

Blowouts and shocks were the order of Major League Lacrosse once again this week. We are four games in, and the MLL season is no longer in its infancy; it’s a hungry angry toddler wielding a large spiked club. Sure, you can contain it — but it’s still unpredictable and dangerous. Two teams that best represent this Bam Bam metaphor the best are the two expansion teams: the Charlotte Hounds and the Ohio Machine.

Both teams can claim one win on their dossier now, but each team takes such a different approach to the league. Ohio is thought of as a team built on defense; Charlotte is thought of a team built on offense.

In reality, neither team has lived up to these expectations put forth on them. Oh, not in terms of wins (Ohio is 1-2; Charlotte is 1-3); I’m talking about their general style of play being dissimilar — even opposite — of what everyone first expected. It’s a good thing to be different; it’s a different thing being good.

Take a look at Charlotte’s game against the [previously/preeminently] stumbling Long Island Lizards. Charlotte mustered just nine goals in the contest despite dominating the possession, outshooting Long Island (by two shots, but still) and being on man up for two and a half minutes longer than their green and black brethren.

Defensively, Charlotte took Max Seibald out with Ryan Flanagan, but the previously lifeless Lizards attackmen torched the Hounds' D for nine of their 10 goals. One of which was executed, four of which were assisted, by Matt Gibson. Gibson, a rookie attackman from Yale, eviscerated Steve Panarelli like the chest-burster from Alien all game.

The emergence of Brian Langtry in this game came in the first half after Grant Catalino was subbed out because the cement in his shoes finally dried and he could no longer move more than 10 feet without stopping to rest. Langtry, Ryan Young and Gibson hopped around unmolested for the rest of the contest — sans a man up when Catalino got back on the field — and created match-up havoc for the Charlotte defense.

I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to say that — aside from Flanagan (and maybe Joe Cinosky once he gets to full strength) — Charlotte’s best defense comes from its midfield. Who plays LSM for this team? Ricky Pages is an energy guy that can get a big hit and an occasional goal, but he’s not effective one-on-one against an elite MLL midfielder — that’s why Flanagan was on Seibald for most of the game. Then again, Pages scored a key goal in this contest to bring the game within one for the Hounds. To clarify, Pages is a valuable asset in transition, just not the 6 on 6. But his goal came from him running right through the middle of Lizard defense, which let him go with two half slides from Brian Karalunas and Michael Skudin who hedged and got nothing but air.

(Speaking of which: Skudin was a supplemental draft pick in 2012 and this was his first game as a Lizards player. And yet no Hounds player went at him more than once for the entire game. Please continue.)

The Hounds’ offense — like many young offenses in the MLL — has yet to establish a gameplan in the 6 on 6 set. Unless Matt Danowski catches the ball, or hangs his defender up behind the cage, the Hounds either take an extremely early run to goal and spread out to make the slide difficult, or they take a bid from 20 feet away that gets saved or backed up. Josh Amidon could be the long-bombing player to complement guys like Jovan Miller and Stevie (I’m trying it out) Berger that take initiative and dodge to the goal, but all the touches either stay with Danowski, Billy Bitter, Berger or Justin Smith — of which only Danowski is known for his passing acumen.

As a result, Josh Amidon has trouble getting a lot of touches, but he’s not alone. Let the record show that Jeremy Boltus — who scored two goals off of deflected passes that miraculously landed in his stick — barely saw the ball on any set despite drifting back to his natural playmaking position behind the cage after being abandoned on the crease. The high/low crease will not work as long as you have Brian Carroll (who suddenly fancied himself a dodger in this game) occupying the high crease spot like he was protesting the 1%ers. It also eliminates your looks from distance by giving a free slide to anyone that tries to get inside the cylinder. (The cylinder is what I like to call the invisible line that stretches from each post up to the top of the 2-point line. I’m a nerd).

On top of ALL of this offensive difficulty, Charlotte gave four shifts TOTAL to Jovan Miller, one of its most dynamic players. One of which was a protracted exchange at the end of the game that result in not one, not two, but three solid looks on cage to tie the game. Charlotte: You have too many kings in your castle and not enough knights to guard it.

One last note from this game unrelated to Charlotte: RIP Stephen Peyser’s shot. You once filled my heart with net ripping, soul-shredding joy, now you just whizz past my head with all the pomp and circumstance of water balloon tossed by hipster.

So. Ohio. Let’s talk.

Allow me to start by paying the toll of embarrassment that my colleagues will otherwise avoid:

You’re not terrible. You’re not horrendous. You’re not an embarrassment. In fact, you play one of the best transition games in MLL. It is unpredictable, exciting and vigorous. I truly enjoy watching your entire team run the break.

This Machine team takes advantage of unsettled situations and transition. It’s a collection of players making plays, not playmakers per se. Your efforts on broken plays are even more momentous, especially when they are backed by the acrobatic stylings of one Chazz Woddson. And just so you know, there are Boston fans that still talk about Chazz in hushed tones like he died after he left. He didn’t die. He went to Ohio. I’m glad you found him, and so are the MLL interns that splice together the highlight packages.

Also, your longpoles are good. They’re not great, but they are good and they are also beginning to gel as a unit. I remember Brett Hughes now. He’s big and mean. We like big and mean. Greg Bice is clearly the leader of the team everyone thought he would be. Kyle Hartzell is playing angry again for a team that appreciates him for what he is — a long bombing soul trapped in a d-man’s body. It’s tragically poetic that all three of these guys are playing on the same line, but as they improve, the team will improve. Especially when you implement defensive schemes that actually neutralize the opposing team’s best player, like they did with Ned Crotty by zoning their backline on GLE in the first half and then switching to a shutoff to play 5 on 5 in the second half. I see you, Garber; I see you.

Let us not forget the goalie play of one Stefan Schroder, another MLL castoff rescued by the Machine ship. Schroder was unbelievable in Saturday’s game, stealing Mike Gabel’s thunder from last week and eating it raw, belching out 17 saves in an all-inclusive effort that included runs past the half line (one of which resulted in a 2-pointer but whatever, right?) and sprawling body stops. He’s seventh in total saves (31), ninth in goals against average (13.78), and tied for eighth in save percentage (50%). Then again, he’s played one less game than three quarters of the goalies in the league…and he looked great on Saturday. So there is that.

But — you knew there would be a “but” — this weekend Ohio beat a Rattlers team that dressed several players with minimal MLL experience: John Lade (5 MLL games), Steven Boyle (5 games), and Tom Montelli (3 games) along three rookies Michale Lazore, Roy Lang and Will Koshansky, AND three players in their first MLL game of the season: Tim Fallon, Dan Hardy and Jordan MacIntosh.

One cannot underestimate the damage done by tinkering with a team as much as this Rattlers team has. The Machine, on the other hand, have steadfastly maintained — despite setbacks in production — their roster to get to a point where they have success, minimal or otherwise, in everything but the 6 on 6 offense.

Ohio’s half-field offense is a morphic field of frustration. There were two possessions in the game this weekend against the Rattlers where ball movement resulted in a good look at cage, and they both came in the second half when the Machine finally realized they had the lead and didn’t have to go at the cage every time they touched the ball. If the Machine can’t get a good one-on-one look in their settled offense it all falls apart and they try for the miracle feed from X to a bomb from up top. It’s like watching wild animals recently “freed” from their captors realizing that they are just imprisoned in a larger cage. That animalistic energy is great in transition, but paralyzing in the offensive end.

A big part of how Ohio scores is by attacking with all their middies while the other team is switching — sometimes they are 6 on 3 if they get a big enough jump and that is trust from the coach. Green light is the only light Garber sees, but it’s also the only light his players see too. It results in spectacular plays — like Chazz’s dive shots, Hartzell’s 2-pointers and mazy runs from Dan Groot to the middle of the field — but it also results in limited possession time and lots of recovery running. Nothing kills you faster in lacrosse than recovery running. Right now, the Machine have several guys that don’t mind doing it — Matt Casey, Jordan Levine, Matt Messina — but it wears on everyone else, especially the long poles who get trapped in transition and have to back-track mid-gallop.

The Machine thrive in a game of “Who can make more mistakes?” Bad subs, offsides, crease violations, thrown away uncontested passes ...You can’t play that game against Ohio — that’s how they win — off of YOUR mistakes. Ohio will beat you if you are lazy. Ohio will beat you if you don’t ride. Ohio will beat you if you allow their backdoor cuts without so much as a peck on the thumb. Rochester found this out the hard way and paid the price for it.

So what is next for these two squads? Ohio should get UVa’s prodigal son Steele Stanwick very soon. Stanwick may just be the shepherd to corral all the wild devil sheep that run around draped in Carolina blue. The Machine should also have Rob Rotanz coming in to add some accomplished shooting pedigree to their previously unaccomplished shooting pedigree. Charlotte has Rotanz’s Dukish compatriot Justin Turri on the way and Notre Dame defenseman Kevin Randall. Randall is a lock down one-on-one defender that can combine with Flanagan and Cinosky to give the Hounds a legitimately frightening back line. Additionally, Mark Manos should be getting his shot in goal any day now for the Hounds, as neither 2011 MLL All Star Joe Marra or 2011 NCAA champion Adam Ghitelman have shown any consistency in their play between the pipes.